…All the Marbles (1981)

Taglines: With two girls like these, how can you lose?

Harry manages The California Dolls, a female wrestling tag team endlessly touring America, and he’s also romantically involved with one of them. Their fortunes seem on the slide (particularly when Harry accepts an engagement involving mud wrestling!) but then the big grudge match beckons.

…All the Marbles (reissued as The California Dolls) is a 1981 comedy-drama film about the trials and travails of a female wrestling tag team and their manager. It was directed by Robert Aldrich (his final film) and stars Peter Falk, Vicki Frederick and Laurene Landon. The Pittsburgh Steeler hall of famer “Mean” Joe Greene plays himself.

Among the young unknown actresses who auditioned, but did not receive a part, was Kathleen Turner. The wrestlers were trained by the former women’s world wrestling champion Mildred Burke.

According to Laurene Landon (who portrayed California Doll Molly), while the film did not perform well at the box office in the United States, it made a healthy profit in foreign markets, and producers were planning a sequel, to be set primarily in Japan, when Robert Aldrich’s death put a halt to the project.

The film is known outside the USA as The California Dolls, because “all the marbles” is an American idiom that makes little sense in most other countries.